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3's recent announcement that it would remove roaming charges from any country in which it operates has turned out not to include Australia, at least for pre-paid customers.

Contract customers will find Australia included, but those on pre-paid (a minority of 3 customers, apparently) won't be able to make calls from Australia, on their home tariff, until later this year.

We contacted 3 to ask why it hadn't made this clear. The company cited technical difficulties integrating the pre-paid system and promised that "3 Like Home" would be available in Australia shortly – though it wouldn't commit further than that.

Pre-paid billing systems are, by necessity, a great deal more complicated than post paid: the systems need to be checking in real time to ensure that the customer has sufficient remaining balance to continue the call. It seems that doing that half way round the world has caused 3 more trouble than they anticipated.

The simple solution is just not to visit Australia, but if you have to then the 3 deal might not be as good as it originally appeared. ®